Ambient, The Tree Without Roots
by Kagura Hale
Summary: 공포는 네 것이 될... Just a few little words not read, just a few. Had she read them, had she taken notice, maybe things would have turned out a whole lot differently...


It wasn't late by any means, though, looking at the sun, it was slowly getting there. Checking a wrist watch, the time read 6:23pm, which was perfect since most people were just getting off work about now. Not that anyone really cared, it was just another day, the sun rising and setting like it always did, the numbers on the clock spinning and changing in an ever constant rhythm.

Almost similar to a predator stalking prey, the sun crept towards the ever darkening horizon with stealth. People started going home, welcomed warmly by loved ones and friends. Husbands kissed their wives in their usual greeting and then sat down for a premade, dinner meal that they had been looking forward to all day. Others were greeted by roommates or friends, laughing over the boring day they had. And the rest, well, some went home to a dark, cold home. Living alone there wasn't anyone there to ask them how their day had been or say hello, so they sat down to a late night show and ate a quickly fixed up meal—usually leftovers from the night before.

Such was the life of the daily people.

The clock now read 9:12pm to anyone who cared enough to check it. Which was not too many people; mainly the elderly who wanted to know how late it was before heading off to bed, parents who wanted to put their children to sleep, or people who just worked every day and needed a good night's rest before having to get up early the next morning.

It was the regular cycle of life.

Beneath the fiery blazes of the evening sunset, a small _umjib_ sat with its beautiful architecture out for the world to see. Though, the home wasn't exactly out in the open city so there weren't many who were able to admire it. While the perpetually setting sun washed the umjib—a traditional Korean home—in its array of bloody colors,—red, orange, pink, and purple—a woman slowly approached with two brown bags of groceries being held firmly in her arms.

She had gone shopping for the week at the market a couple hours ago and was now returning home to her family; a husband and a daughter. The bags were full of various food items, all in which she would use in the days to come to make delicious meals. Had she known that she'd have been gone so long, she might have left earlier in the day to do her shopping.

Usually she managed to get grocery shopping out of the way early in the week, but it was Wednesday now and she had only just gone to do so. She just hadn't gotten around to doing it on Sunday like she usually did, not that that bothered her.

Walking into her home, she was welcomed by her young daughter as she ran up to her, calling her name and hugged her legs, then a kiss from her husband as he smiled when she walked through the door. The woman smiled in her turn and greeted the two as she set the groceries on the kitchen counter and then picked up her daughter to hold her.

The husband then took the moment to tell his wife that a package had arrived for her while she was gone and that it was sitting outside on the deck for her. Curious as to what it might be, the wife walked outside—still holding her six year old daughter—and saw the package her husband had been talking about.

It was small, maybe about the width and length of a book but it was tall, about a foot tall. So, picking up the box, the woman sat on the edge of her deck, her feet hanging over the edge, and opened the box with her daughter sitting in her lap.

Underneath the brown paper wrapping was a little black box laced with gold trimming. It was beautiful with its glossy sheen and perfect design and the woman found herself tracing the lines on it with the tip of her fingers. Though so she found that the top slid off and, opening it, she found a simple little nesting doll that was black completely. All inside it were, too, the same, though on ever one was some picture of a woman and her body deformed in some way.

The wife stared at the dolls within the dolls and her face slowly twisted into a frown, she didn't understand why this was given to her. She didn't remember buying anything like this and didn't know anyone who might have bought it for her. Could her husband have? She shook her head, she doubted it. It just didn't seem likely. So, looking over the brown paper she had just torn off the box, she looked for a return address but all she found was her's. There was no other address on it, or on the box, or anything.

Just her address

The daughter wore a wide and bright smile as she saw the dolls and asked her mother if she could play with them but the woman said no and tucked the nesting doll back into the box and shut it before standing up and walking back inside with her daughter. The husband looked over at the two when they came back inside and asked what it was that had been in the package. Of course his wife told him what it had been and that was that.

Later that day… err… night, the husband's wife woke up in the midnight hour in a cold sweat. She couldn't remember what she had just been dreaming but she knew for certain that it had been a nightmare. So, sitting up, she rubbed a hand over her face and through her hair before looking around at the darkness of her bedroom.

It was quiet and lacking interest as it always was at this hour. But, feeling like she couldn't go back to sleep, the woman got up and walked out of her room and into the bathroom—splashing cold water on her face to try and help herself shake off the strange feeling of whatever she had been dreaming. Then, looking up into the mirror, she sighed at her reflection and blinked a couple of times before walking out of the bathroom and making her way towards her bedroom.

Stopping a few feet short of her door, however.

Right underneath the doorframe, in the middle of the floor, stood the nesting doll that the woman swore she had put away earlier when she had closed the box up. Yet there it stood, facing her too.

The picture on the doll of the deformed woman seemed to stare back at her, with secret eyes almost as it pierced past a consciousness and into a more eerie sensation. The woman felt almost as if she was surrounded by eyes and the feeling greatly unsettled her. She felt tense and uncomfortable and wanted to just kick the doll out of the way and climb back into bed into the comforting arms of her husband.

Quickly darting around the doll and shutting her bedroom door behind her—knocking the doll over and sending it rolling down the hallway—the woman ran to her bed and shook her husband awake, feeling scared and wanting nothing more than to be comforted.

She knew her husband was a deep sleeper, he always had been, Tadao had just always been like that. But… he just wouldn't wake up, no matter how much she shook him. Then, calling his name over and over again her Tadao finally started to stir and he rolled over on his back to see what his wife wanted.

But he was faceless…

Not as in his face had been ripped from his features, muscle and bone showing, no. It was just smooth skin as he _stared_ at her. There were indentions in his face, little dips in his features, indicating where his eyes, nose and mouth should be—but they weren't there.

His wife immediately backed away from her husband and fell off the bed in the process. She was shaking, the sight of her husband only making her feel even more terrified. Then, as he sat up and tried to speak to her, he realized something was wrong. His voice wouldn't come, and as he tried to open his mouth he soon realized he didn't have one. Feeling his face with shaky hands, Tadao began to panic as well. He could see just fine, even though he had no eyes, and he could breathe just fine as far as he was aware, but it was the fact that his face was _**gone**_ that disturbed him. It unsettled him, worried him, unhinged his calm attitude that he held so well.

Rine—the wife's name—was shaking in the farthest corner of their room as she stared, wide eyed at her husband, Tadao. She wanted to help him but then again, she didn't want to touch him. She wanted to be close to him, to have him hold her and comfort her like he could do so well, but like this she wanted to be as far away as possible from him.

Then the door she had slammed shut started to open…

An intense fear gripped at Rine and she pushed herself against the wall trying to get farther away. Just as the door swung fully open, there in the middle of the frame stood the same nesting doll she had heard roll down the hallway.

Almost as if supernaturally, everything went pitch black, and when the lights of night returned—the moon gazing through the windows—there were two of the dolls, one smaller than the other though. It happened again… and again… the darkness flashing on and off until a clear trail lead itself straight to Rine and the smallest of the dolls was now directly in front of her. It was about a third the size of her hand and on the front was the deformed picture of an old, elderly woman with her ribs coming out of her chest.

Rine started shaking consistently as she felt her mental strength dwindling and becoming unstable. Then, right then, the doll in front of her fell over and opened up on its own and spilling out of it was…

The face of her husband, Tadao, and daughter, Amealia.

Tears now stung at Rine's eyes as she pressed herself closer to the wall and hoped dearly that it would cave behind her and she could run away. It didn't, of course. She now felt extremely ill at ease and nervous, her body shaking from the fear.

Have you ever felt so scared or startled that you couldn't scream? That's how it was for her. Her voice was caught up in a lump in her throat and she couldn't speak let alone scream. And what would screaming have done for her anyway? It wouldn't have made the nesting dolls go away, it wouldn't make her fears wash from her.

Then almost as life seemed to get caught in a glitch, the area around Rine began to twitch and flicker until all ten dolls now stood in front of her, the faces of her loved ones still out on the floor.

Rine felt the sweat of terror riding down the sides of her face and abruptly stood up without thinking and ran out of the room, tripping somewhere down the hallway but getting up immediately after and not looking behind her. Had she looked behind her she might have stopped and hesitated—thinking about running back. For there in her room, she didn't see that the dolls just devoured her husband.

Not sucking him into a bottomless pit either, no. He was crushed to size to fit in the smallest doll, his body gruesomely compressed until the top of the figure could be placed back on securely and then all of the figures returning back into each other with a matter of a few more dark flashes, now only the main doll visible, holding the rest inside itself.

Running as if a serial killer was on her heels, Rine fled her home and ran outside, stopping only by a sakura tree that stood in her front yard. She was out of breath, not from running but from fright, and so collapsed to her knees and she tried to breathe and calm herself down.

Knots twisted in her stomach and she felt sick, really sick. She felt like she was going to vomit and already she was dry heaving, trying to prevent herself from doing so. On her knees, she leaned forward and held herself up on her hands as she stared at the ground. Her throat burned as she felt the acid rising from her middle and eventually she did vomit up everything that she had eaten for dinner…

After a moment of this, Rine was finally able to control herself as she sat back on her heels and started to cry. Her black hair was falling out of her bun and into her face as the crystal tears rode down her porcelain skin. She was immensely scared, terrified and unnerved; she couldn't handle this, she just wanted to believe that it was a bad dream. That in the morning she was going to wake up to the smile of the two people she loved most in the world.

Her body was shaking, racking with sobs and fright.

This was all too foreboding, too ominous—such as something she would expect to read in the book of a horror novel. But it was happening right in front of her, it happened before her eyes.

Rine started to shake more as she covered her face with her hands, if only she hadn't opened that box maybe none of this would have happened. Or was it something else? Had she done something else? She shook her head; it was that cursed box's fault!

Had only she read the inscription carved on the lid of the box: **공포는****네****것이****될****...**

"The terror be yours…" That was what it read.

Rine then looked up, only to become face to face with the doll, it barely centimeters away from her… Her throat was dry, her words caught in that familiar lump she had been feeling all night, and her breathing came in long, raged breaths.

Then, it only got worse.

At first it started with an itching on her right shoulder but gradually moved to her entire body and slowly turned into pain. An excruciating pain, one that sent silent screams coming from her mouth. Her body began to twist and break at the joints as well as more dense bone areas such as the middles of bones that were more hard to snap. But they broke in every inch of her body until the shock took over and her vision began to swim in and out. She didn't know what was happening, couldn't tell if the nesting doll was doing it.

It was just sitting there after all, seemingly staring at her, watching events unfold.

Rine's vocal cords then snapped and she couldn't scream anymore, she felt herself slipping into an unconsciousness—a forever deep one. Only a moment later was she consumed by the blackness as her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she began floating adrift in nothingness.

Screams echoed around her and she desperately tried to shut them out, to make them go away. They were tearing at her, grating on her nerves—or what was left of them. Then that sensation of eyes watching her became even more intense as Rine felt something grabbing at her ankles and, looking down, she saw the boney hands of humans reaching for her—pulling her deeper into the blackness.

On the outside, no one would know of the family, their bodies were gone or at least the husband and daughter's were. Were anyone to look closely at the doll, however, they would notice a new addition; an eleventh doll now holding the rest.

Though on the front of it was a picture of a woman, deformed and a look of pain clearly readable across her face. She also seemed to really resemble Rine…

Though that was just a coincidence… right?


End file.
